Autodesk Simulation DFM is design for manufacturing simulation software that helps product designers create digital prototypes with manufacturability in mind. Simulation DFM works within your 3D CAD system to provide directional feedback on manufacturability, costs, and sustainability as you design plastic parts.

Working closely with Autodesk, and 3D Systems, WB Engineering provides the best solutions for your design challenges, with an offering which includes everything from Autodesk training, to design process automation, ERP integration, and product development, to 3D Printing. Located in Miami, focused on the manufacturing and industrial markets, we are an engineering services company, combining talented people and business processes to provide Digital and Rapid Prototyping solutions (products and services). All of our efforts are focused on helping companies compress time to market, and decreasing design cost to add to our customers bottom line. Our approach to Digital Prototyping and Rapid Prototyping is scalable and cost effective, which can help your organization boost design efficiency while delivering more innovative design ideas.

Working closely with Autodesk, and 3D Systems, WB Engineering provides the best solutions for your design challenges, with an offering which includes everything from Autodesk training, to design process automation, ERP integration, and product development, to 3D Printing. Located in Miami, focused on the manufacturing and industrial markets, we are an engineering services company, combining talented people and business processes to provide Digital and Rapid Prototyping solutions (products and services). All of our efforts are focused on helping companies compress time to market, and decreasing design cost to add to our customers bottom line. Our approach to Digital Prototyping and Rapid Prototyping is scalable and cost effective, which can help your organization boost design efficiency while delivering more innovative design ideas.

Abraham Reichental, chief executive officer of 3D Systems Corp., talks about the company’s equipment which creates three-dimensional models. He speaks with Cory Johnson on Bloomberg Television’s “Bloomberg West.” Emily Chang also speaks. (Source: Bloomberg)

Working closely with Autodesk, and 3D Systems, WB Engineering provides the best solutions for your design challenges, with an offering which includes everything from Autodesk training, to design process automation, ERP integration, and product development, to 3D Printing. Located in Miami, focused on the manufacturing and industrial markets, we are an engineering services company, combining talented people and business processes to provide Digital and Rapid Prototyping solutions (products and services). All of our efforts are focused on helping companies compress time to market, and decreasing design cost to add to our customers bottom line. Our approach to Digital Prototyping and Rapid Prototyping is scalable and cost effective, which can help your organization boost design efficiency while delivering more innovative design ideas.

Via ABC News

Working closely with Autodesk, and 3D Systems, WB Engineering provides the best solutions for your design challenges, with an offering which includes everything from Autodesk training, to design process automation, ERP integration, and product development, to 3D Printing. Located in Miami, focused on the manufacturing and industrial markets, we are an engineering services company, combining talented people and business processes to provide Digital and Rapid Prototyping solutions (products and services). All of our efforts are focused on helping companies compress time to market, and decreasing design cost to add to our customers bottom line. Our approach to Digital Prototyping and Rapid Prototyping is scalable and cost effective, which can help your organization boost design efficiency while delivering more innovative design ideas.

Scientists are pioneering the use of 3D printers to create drugs and other chemicals at the University of Glasgow.

Researchers have used a £1,250 system to create a range of organic compounds and inorganic clusters – some of which are used to create cancer treatments.

Longer term, the scientists say the process could be used to make customized medicines.

They predict the technique will be used by pharmaceutical firms within five years, and by the public within 20.

"We are showing that you can take chemical constituents, pass them through a printer and create what is effectively a chemical synthesiser in which the reaction occurs allowing you to get out something different at the end," researcher Mark Symes told the BBC.

"We’re extrapolating from that to say that in the future you could buy common chemicals, slot them into something that 3D prints, just press a button to mix the ingredients and filter them through the architecture and at the bottom you would get out your prescription drug."

‘Revolutionising healthcare’

The 3D printing process involves the use of a robotically controlled syringe which builds an object out of a gel-based "ink", into which chemicals and catalysts are mixed.

"Chemists normally put chemicals in glassware to create a reaction," said Prof Lee Cronin, who came up with the idea.

Researchers at Glasgow University develop a revolutionary new process using 3D technology to print drugs

"What we are doing is mixing the concept of the glassware and the chemicals together in the 3D printer to create what we call ‘reactionware’.

"It’s almost like a layer cake – you print the last reactionary agent first and then build other chemical layers above, finally adding a liquid at the top. The liquid goes to layer one making a new molecule which goes to the next layer creating another and so on until at the bottom you get your prescription drug out."

Until now the researchers have used bathroom sealant to create their reactor, and the substances created have not been suitable for human consumption.

But the scientists say their next step is to switch ingredients and replicate drugs already available in pharmacies. They also hope to work with engineers to increase the printer’s speed and resolution.

If successful, they say doctors and individuals could ultimately download pre-set recipes and even tailor medicines to their individual needs.

"This would not only place traditionally expensive chemical engineering technology within reach of typical laboratories and small commercial enterprises, but also could revolutionise access to healthcare and the chemical sciences in general in the developing world," they wrote in a paper published in the Nature Chemistry journal.

via BBC News.

Working closely with Autodesk, and 3D Systems, WB Engineering provides the best solutions for your design challenges, with an offering which includes everything from Autodesk training, to design process automation, ERP integration, and product development, to 3D Printing. Located in Miami, focused on the manufacturing and industrial markets, we are an engineering services company, combining talented people and business processes to provide Digital and Rapid Prototyping solutions (products and services). All of our efforts are focused on helping companies compress time to market, and decreasing design cost to add to our customers bottom line. Our approach to Digital Prototyping and Rapid Prototyping is scalable and cost effective, which can help your organization boost design efficiency while delivering more innovative design ideas.

Register now for the Autodesk Virtual Event to learn about the newest Autodesk software, Autodesk Suites and more. Special guests include Autodesk Executives and our Technical Evangelist Lynn Allen. View special presentations from our industry experts on known industry challenges and how Autodesk solutions can help solve them.

Reserve your space today for this FREE online event – you won’t want to miss it.Register Now    > 

Working closely with Autodesk, and 3D Systems, WB Engineering provides the best solutions for your design challenges, with an offering which includes everything from Autodesk training, to design process automation, ERP integration, and product development, to 3D Printing. Located in Miami, focused on the manufacturing and industrial markets, we are an engineering services company, combining talented people and business processes to provide Digital and Rapid Prototyping solutions (products and services). All of our efforts are focused on helping companies compress time to market, and decreasing design cost to add to our customers bottom line. Our approach to Digital Prototyping and Rapid Prototyping is scalable and cost effective, which can help your organization boost design efficiency while delivering more innovative design ideas.

The team is able to create sculptures as small as a grain of sand in a fraction of the time than had previously been required.

To demonstrate the process the group created a model of a Formula 1 racing car 0.285mm (0.011in) in length in just over four minutes.

The scientists said the technique could be used to make small biomedical parts.

To produce the car about 100 layers, each consisting of 200 single printed lines, were created by Vienna University of Technology’s equipment.

“The technology itself is quite well known in the science arena, but the problem was that it was always extremely slow,” Prof Jurgen Stampfl told the BBC.

“It was good as a showcase, but for real world applications it was much too time-consuming. Making complex large 3D structures would take hours or even days.

“Using our set-up and materials, we can speed that up by a factor of 500 or in some cases 1,000 times.”

Laser light

The formal name for the process is “two-photon lithography”.

It involves focusing a laser beam onto liquid resin to harden it, leaving behind a line of solid polymer just a few nanometres wide.

Unlike traditional 3D-printing techniques which build up an object by adding layers to its surface, the laser can create solid material anywhere within the liquid material.

The process gets its name because the resin only sets if the molecules within it absorb two photons of the laser beam at once – which only happens at the very centre of the beam.

The team’s breakthrough involved improving the control mechanism for mirrors used to focus the laser, and developing the special type of resin involved in the process.

The researchers are now developing bio-compatible resins so that the objects they create can be used by doctors.

One suggested application is to create scaffolds which cells could use to build new biological tissues.

Engineers at Washington State University have already shown how 3D-printers can be used to build scaffolds to promote the regrowth of damaged bone.

Researchers also created nano-models of London’s Tower Bridge and Vienna’s St Stephen’s Cathedral

Prof Stampfl said his team’s technique can work in water-based environments meaning it is also capable of creating scaffolds suitable for softer tissues such as cartilage and muscle tissue.

“We can also ‘write’ these structures in the presence of cells as we use an infrared laser which is completely harmless for biological tissue,” he added.

“This is not possible with other 3D-printing techniques which first rely on making the scaffolds and then seed the cells, or use a thin inkjet nozzle to push through the cells which may damage them.

“The two-photon lithography technique lets us do the writing in the same space as the cells – what we call in-vivo writing.”

Via BBC News

Working closely with Autodesk, and 3D Systems, WB Engineering provides the best solutions for your design challenges, with an offering which includes everything from Autodesk training, to design process automation, ERP integration, and product development, to 3D Printing. Located in Miami, focused on the manufacturing and industrial markets, we are an engineering services company, combining talented people and business processes to provide Digital and Rapid Prototyping solutions (products and services). All of our efforts are focused on helping companies compress time to market, and decreasing design cost to add to our customers bottom line. Our approach to Digital Prototyping and Rapid Prototyping is scalable and cost effective, which can help your organization boost design efficiency while delivering more innovative design ideas.

Image Gallery (26 images)

For a few years now we’ve been wondering at all the possibilities that lay in store for 3D printing. Most of what’s come out of this brilliant marriage of CAD software and mechanical extruders so far has been lots of small plastic chess pieces and other plastic trinkets, but lately we’re starting to see 3D printing pushed to new heights, with some pretty remarkable results. Here’s our brief list of some of the coolest items to come out of a 3D printer so far.

The iPhone Phone

The iPhone phone can be found on Thingiverse, a community of 3D printable objects and source designs, and is one of the coolest examples I’ve seen of a very simple printed object – functional, hip and kind of funny. Designed for “The Absurd iPhone Accessory Contest,” it’s an example of form over function with its creator saying he’s unsure how how much sound will be picked up and make it through the case, which covers the speaker and microphone. Although he’s added a chamber below the speaker/mic and holes up to the mouth piece so he imagines “something will come out.”

A wearable bikini

Who says 3D printer fans don’t spend much time at the beach? This printed swimwear works just as well as a bikini produced by more traditional means – in fact its designers say it actually becomes more comfortable to wear in the water. It’s not cheap though – a full outfit will set you back a few hundred dollars.

Historical artifacts

The Smithsonian Institution turned to 3D printing as a means of taking some its priceless historical articles out on the road. The Smithsonian has begun the process of digitizing some of its extensive collections for replication using systems like RedEye on Demand. Funding is scarce for the project, but so far they say they’ve managed to create a replica of a statue of Thomas Jefferson that is the largest such 3D printed historical copy of its kind.

A working clock

An old analog clock with tons of gears is a pretty complicated device that relies on precision we once thought required hand-crafting. Today, 3D printing offers such precision it was just a matter of time until someone used this newest of technologies to create a functional object that is truly old school. There’s several clock designs out there for 3D printers, but the most intricate seems to be this one from syvwlch in the Thingiverse community.

Human jaw

Prosthetics are an obvious and ideal application for 3D printing, and in one of the most dramatic examples a printed lower jaw implant restored one elderly patient’s bite. Replacement hands, limbs and other body parts have also been designed and printed.

PL1Q Vampire quadcopter

If a clock and all its requisite gears can be printed, it’s not much of a leap to print a working quadcopter with all the needed rotors. The Swedish designer that created the Vampire printed the entire frame, but the electronics and some of the moving parts came separately.

Urbee hybrid car

This rather strange looking disc of a car was the first that we’d ever heard of that used the 3D printing process to create the frames of its prototypes. 3D printing pioneer Stratasys printed out the chassis using a process called fused deposition modeling. While you won’t be able to whip this up with a consumer desktop 3D printer, it’s an reminder of the industrial origins of 3D printing.

Buildings

Once the 3D printing revolution began it was only a matter of time until we arrived at this point – inventor Enrico Dini’s D-shape “3D building system.” Essentially, it’s a huge 3D printer that uses a combination of extruded liquid adhesive compound on a bed of sand with a solid catalyst mixed in. The huge printer makes a couple of passes to create a solid structure. The whole process takes only a quarter the time of traditional building techniques. Here’s a trailer for a documentary about the inventor and invention:

That’s just some of the 3D printed items that provide a glimpse at what is possible using this technology that is still in its relative infancy. If you have some notable examples of items we may have missed or some suggestions for items you’d like to see extruded from a 3D printer we’d love to hear them in the comments.

Via Gizmag

Working closely with Autodesk, and 3D Systems, WB Engineering provides the best solutions for your design challenges, with an offering which includes everything from Autodesk training, to design process automation, ERP integration, and product development, to 3D Printing. Located in Miami, focused on the manufacturing and industrial markets, we are an engineering services company, combining talented people and business processes to provide Digital and Rapid Prototyping solutions (products and services). All of our efforts are focused on helping companies compress time to market, and decreasing design cost to add to our customers bottom line. Our approach to Digital Prototyping and Rapid Prototyping is scalable and cost effective, which can help your organization boost design efficiency while delivering more innovative design ideas.

Autodesk PLM 360

Unlike traditional PLM systems – which have historically been expensive and complicated – Autodesk PLM 360 is instant-on and easily configurable to meet customer-specific product-lifecycle process needs across the enterprise. It is also the first cloud-based PLM solution focused on business applications beyond engineering and bill of material management. As a result, employees in a range of roles – from planning and product development to quality and compliance to service and more – can better access product and project-related information that helps them continuously improve the products they design and manufacture.

“Our customers deserve modern technology to help solve the needs of their increasingly complex and global businesses,” said Robert “Buzz” Kross, senior vice president, Design, Lifecycle and Simulation at Autodesk. “Autodesk PLM 360′s simple, flexible, cloud-based approach will radically improve the ability for companies to gain the full benefits of PLM, helping them to become more competitive and grow their business.” In addition to offering an attractive, modern look and feel for a superior user experience, Autodesk PLM 360 takes a highly configurable no-programming approach to system configuration that eliminates the need for expensive programmers and consultants. Dozens of pre-installed apps automate business processes across the lifecycle. With intuitive drag-and-drop functionality, users can easily tailor apps or build their own to meet specific needs and without having to purchase additional modules. Autodesk PLM 360 is a true multi-tenant cloud application. Users and managers will never again have to worry about upgrades and broken customization; the application is always up-to-date and compatible with any customer-specific configuration. IT professionals are freed from non-strategic system management since users access Autodesk PLM 360 from a fully managed data center that provides security, high performance and disaster recovery. Additionally, the cloud-based foundation offers users anytime, anywhere access, from virtually any mobile device or web browser. Autodesk PLM 360 also features integration and interoperability to on-premise systems including Autodesk Vault product data management (PDM) software. Vault enables workgroups to organize, manage and track their engineering CAD data, manufacturing bills-of-material and change processes from a centralized location.

Via Dexigner

Working closely with Autodesk, and 3D Systems, WB Engineering provides the best solutions for your design challenges, with an offering which includes everything from Autodesk training, to design process automation, ERP integration, and product development, to 3D Printing. Located in Miami, focused on the manufacturing and industrial markets, we are an engineering services company, combining talented people and business processes to provide Digital and Rapid Prototyping solutions (products and services). All of our efforts are focused on helping companies compress time to market, and decreasing design cost to add to our customers bottom line. Our approach to Digital Prototyping and Rapid Prototyping is scalable and cost effective, which can help your organization boost design efficiency while delivering more innovative design ideas.

What may look like a standard art exhibit in the Flatiron District is far from it — mainly because all the objects are printed, as in created with something similar to the document printer you have at home. NY1′s Adam Balkin filed the following report.

Believe it or not, everything on display at the Print/3D art exhibit in Manhattan’s Flatiron District was, in fact, printed by a 3D printer like the one from MakerBot Industries.

The exhibit is curated by Material ConneXion, a company that researches, for manufacturers, all sorts of materials and processes for making things out of those materials.

“Three-D printing is another form of a process that designers can use to help rapidly prototype and innovate, make new products, design new concepts. Previously, what you would do is take your idea, your CAD file, your drawing could’ve been a sketch on the back of a napkin and you’d send it off to a company that would take 3-4 weeks to make something now you can take your CAD file, connect it up to your 3D printer and within a couple hours you will have an actual prototype of the product you’ve designed,” says Susan Towers of Material ConneXion.

And something that may surprise even those who’ve seen 3D printing before, in addition to the nylons and plastics, now metals and ceramic can be printed as well. The other interesting detail is how detailed the printings can get. One item on display was a scale model of one of the artist’s deceased grandfather, created from a photograph.

And it’s not all just artwork. Some of the items can be extremely practical, such as printed prosthetics.

“Now you have a company like Bespoke that’s based out in San Francisco that’s making 3D printed Bespoke body parts. So prosthesis, for example, could be for a wounded veteran coming back who needs a leg,” says Towers.

There’s also a bikini made out of nylon that designers say may actually hold water while keeping its shape better than most other swimwear out there.

“When it absorbs water it’s kinda like seashells so the water evenly distributes and it becomes nice and smooth and it doesn’t get heavier or weighed down,” says Mary Huang of Continuum Fashion.

Incidentally, if you’re interested in creating your own printed objects you can now buy your own 3D printer, MakerBot’s Thing-O-Matic for example sells for a little over a thousand dollars. Or, do an online search for 3D printing for services that will print projects one at a time for you.

via NY1

Working closely with Autodesk, and 3D Systems, WB Engineering provides the best solutions for your design challenges, with an offering which includes everything from Autodesk training, to design process automation, ERP integration, and product development, to 3D Printing. Located in Miami, focused on the manufacturing and industrial markets, we are an engineering services company, combining talented people and business processes to provide Digital and Rapid Prototyping solutions (products and services). All of our efforts are focused on helping companies compress time to market, and decreasing design cost to add to our customers bottom line. Our approach to Digital Prototyping and Rapid Prototyping is scalable and cost effective, which can help your organization boost design efficiency while delivering more innovative design ideas.